Indefinite isolation. That seems to be WA Premier Mark McGowan’s price for locking his state in a gilded cage. The longer spent in the cage, the less people prepare for the inevitable need to escape. It’s now prolonging their stay.

The zero-COVID policies that the WA government has pursued for almost two years have set a bar that is politically and medically difficult to climb down from. No health advice or modelling has been released to back up the decision to continue border closures past the scrapped February 5 reopening plan. Instead, Mr McGowan justifies it by using apocalyptic language to describe the eastern states.